AMC Best Picture Showcase Information

They will be hosting the Best Picture Showcase at AMC Theaters over 2 Saturdays, 2/27 and 3/6. Information on the event can be found here. On 2/27 they will be showing Avatar in 3d at most theaters. They are taking votes for the other 4 movies to be shown that day. Voting can be done here. Voting will end on Sunday, February 7 at 11:59PM EST.

Waldo’s Best Picture Predictions

Now that all of the big preoscar award nominees have been announced I thought I’d have a little bit of fun estimating the Oscar candidates for best picture based on how many other award ceremonies nominated a film for best picture. The eight awards considered are National Board of Review, American Film Institute, Broadcast Film Critics Association, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, and Producers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, and Writers Guild of America.

The only film nominated for Best Picture by all of these groups is The Hurt Locker so you can rest assured that is a lock for the Oscars but we already knew that. The other films in descending order are as follows.

Precious 7 Best Picture Nominations
Up in the Air 7 Best Picture Nominations
Inglorious Basterds 6 Best Picture Nominations (This film was not eligible for a WGA)
Avatar 5 Best Picture Nominations

Now in a normal year we would be done and those would be our nominees but this is not a normal year at all. This year we have 10 nominees so we have to include the following.

An Education 4 Best Picture Nominations
A Serious Man 4 Best Picture Nominations
Up 4 Best Picture Nominations

That brings us to 8 and we have 5 films tied with 3 nominations each fighting for those last 2 spots.

(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover

I have to hope that the academy will not begin to think about nominating either of these films but after the Juno debacle you never know.

That leaves Invictus, Nine, and Star Trek to battle for the last 2 spots. The smart money is on Invictus and Nine as they both have Oscar bait written all over them but you never can tell. I loved Star Trek and it would be nice to see them get a nomination this year but I’m pretty sure that isn’t happening.

So there you have it, my 10 pics for the nominations.

The Hurt Locker
Precious
Up in the Air
Inglourious Basterds
Avatar
An Education
A Serious Man
Up
Invictus
Nine

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
2009
Director: Neal Brennan
Writer: Andy Stock, Rick Stempson
Starring: Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames
Synopsis: When businesses are failing, they call in Don Ready (Jeremy Piven), a fast-talking closer who can sell anything to anybody. Hired to rescue a flagging auto dealership during a Fourth of July sale, Don spends his days on the lot and his nights at local strip clubs. Everything’s going swimmingly … until he gets blindsided by love. Ving Rhames  and Kathryn Hahn co-star in this comedy from “Chappelle’s Show” producer Neal Brennan.

I think Jeremy Piven is great and this role is cut just for him. It is classic Piven no doubt about it. Yes it was cheesy, yes every character in this is a caricature of characters from crappy 80′s comedies, and I thought it was hilarious.

So many elements are at play here that it’s hard to know where to start. One of my favorite subplots involves one of the members of Piven’s team desperately wants to have sex with the lot owners son. Problem is he is 10 years old in a 40 year old mans body. This was played quite well and I got a good laugh out of it. I also wished I was a 10 year old boy in a 40 year old mans body because I would have hit that.

This does have all the elements of the movies that were so very popular in the 80′s. Family car dealership is facing foreclosure, evil rich dealership tries to buy them out so they can run them out of town, they have to sell all the cars in a weekend to stay in business, blah blah blah. You know where all this is going, you’ve seen this movie a hundred times but The Goods delivers.

There are a ton of bit players who do a great job in this movie. You will recognize a lot of them from such great television shows as Arrested Development and Community. I had no idea Will Ferrel was in this movie and I’m glad. I don’t like Will Ferrell and if I had known he was in it I would not have watched it. Even he was funny for the first time ever.

It’s fun, it’s campy, it’s formulaic, and it’s hilarious. I can’t do Kurosawa Criterion films every night and this makes for a good break.

Trick ‘r Treat

Trick ‘R Treat
2008
Director: Michael Dougherty
Writer: Michael Dougherty
Starring: Bryan Cox, Anna Paquin
Synopsis: The usually boisterous traditions of Halloween turn baleful, and everyone in a small town tries to survive one night in pure hell in writer-director Michael Dougherty’s fright fest. Several stories weave together, such as a loner fending off a demented trick-or-treater’s attacks, kids uncovering a freaky secret, a school principal — who moonlights as a serial killer — poisoning his candy, and more. Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin and Brian Cox star.

This film was highly acclaimed in the horror community drawing rave reviews across the board. Everyone I talked to about it was absolutely in love with it. They would go on and on about how brilliant and groundbreaking it was so I decided I had to see it in spite of the fact that the trailer did nothing for me at all.

This was the most disappointing horror movie I have seen since Midnight Meat Train, another movie that the horror nerds went crazy for. It was clear from the opening scene that I would have no interest in this film. I kept hoping it would get better. It did not.

This is an anthology horror film. There are 4 stories that are told in this movie. I am a fan of anthology horror movies, always have been. Trilogy of Terror, Creepshow, and The Twilight Zone are some of my all time favorites. Those movies, however, handled their stories in a different and much better manner. They would tell a story, then it would end and they would tell another one. In Trick ‘R Treat, the stories are all told at the same time so there are a lot of jumps in the chronology. You will see someone get murdered, and then in a later scene they are back while they tell a different story and then go back to revisit the story where that character was murdered. I have no issue with nonlinear time lines in films but this one was just clunky and poorly laid out. Some people I have seen have called this the Pulp Fiction of horror films. Just because they use nonlinear time does not make it comparable to Pulp Fiction.

There is one huge boundary that this movie blows right by. One thing that has been off limits even in the world of horror for the most part is the killing of children. There is some of that in this movie and that is probably why it was unable to get a wide release. Some people, like the Wife Unit, think that this is a boundary that should not be crossed and she was ill at ease watching scenes of child murder. It didn’t bother me so much but if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing you may want to avoid this movie.

From a film making standpoint I will say this, Dougherty made a good looking movie. He not only did a good job of putting you in the horror mood but some of the scenes were absolutely beautiful to look at. It was similar to watching the camera work in classic Italian horror of the 70′s. All in all however, this movie left me feeling flat and disinterested.

Religulous

Director: Larry Charles
Writer: Bill Maher
Starring: Bill Maher
Synopsis: Politically provocative talk show host Bill Maher  skewers the current state of organized religion in this hot-button documentary that derives its title from a blend of the words “religion” and “ridiculous.” Making stops in Jerusalem, the Vatican and other holy destinations, Maher travels the world to talk to believers from a variety of faiths to find out why they’re so sure their religion is right — and why they’re so certain others are wrong.

This is going to be a very difficult review for me to write without going into a tangent. I feel that in fairness to the reader they should know where I stand on the issue of religion. I am an atheist. Like many other atheists, I was raised in a moderately strict religious household. My family didn’t handle snakes or speak in tongues or any of that sort of thing but we did go to church every week and it was made fairly clear to me that any number of things that I did were going to get me an express ticket to Hell. I don’t believe any of that stuff anymore and, honestly, I don’t think I ever did. So now you know where I’m coming from when you read this review.

I had read that this was simply going to be Bill Maher traveling the world asking questions about religion to people who were involved in that sort of thing. I was under the impression that this was not going to be a point and giggle at the weirdos session but rather would be an open dialogue between an atheist and those who believe in God, Allah, The Virgin Mary, etc. Initially that is what I got but it quickly dissolved into a tired documentary where the clever atheist guys laughs at the dumb christians or whatever religion he was laughing at at the time. This is all good and fine and he did ask questions that I thought were entertaining and enlightening but it came off as a bit more of an attack on religion than a legitimate debate about religion.

Some of the segments were very interesting. I learned that in the Vatican, they actually seem to have a decent perspective of how things work. I also have to give credit where it is due. Most of the people he talked to actually were willing to have an open dialogue with him in spite of the fact that he was basically mocking their belief structure. I expected a lot more situations where the church people would walk away or get very angry because someone was questioning their God. That didn’t happen very often so, kudos to the church people. They had absolutely no answers to any of the facts that were presented to them but at least they didn’t come off as complete jerks.

In the end this was just like so many other documentaries. You have to look at the agenda of the person making. Clearly the agenda here was to make churchgoing types look like imbeciles. Mission accomplished. It would have probably made for a really interesting hour long special on HBO but at an hour and 41 minutes, I found myself zoning out at the end. There are only so many ways you can make Christians squirm before it stops being interesting and starts being redundant.

Waldo

The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows

1959
Director: Francois Truffaut
Writers: Francois Truffaut (scenario), Marcel Moussy (adaption)
Starring: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claire Maurier

This is one of those movies that is kind of a movie nerd must see and yet for some reason I had never seen it. I’m not really sure why, I don’t have an aversion to French New Wave Cinema, I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I watched it last night and thought it was just brilliant.

One thing that I noticed right away is the fact that French kids, just like American kids, are bad. All these kids do is fight, steal, lie, smoke, and drink. Seriously, that’s what they do all the time. In this film one of the kids, Antoine, is having a rough go of it. He is fed up with school, his home life isn’t great, his mother is an insufferable bitch, and he is just looking for a way out. He decides his best option is to run away from home and start his own life.

He has a friend who is, essentially a professional juvenile delinquent, who helps him out. He tries it once and is back at home the next day after he goes to school and his parents show up to pick him up. You would think he would have had the sense not to go back to school as that is probably the first place they would look but, there he was. He tries to make a go of it again and all seems to be getting better but eventually it all starts to fall apart again for young Antoine and he hits the road again.

You get the idea of what the film is about so I don’t want to say anything else about that. What I got from this film is a complete and total sense of isolation for Antoine. He had some friends in school and his father seemed to be a fairly decent guy who tried to befriend his son as much as possible. In spite of this, it always seemed that Antoine was completely alone. Even when things were going well he knew deep down that nobody could help him.

There was one scene in this movie that portrayed that emotion so perfectly that I thought I was going to cry. I’m not one to cry at a lot of movies but I’m also not going to pretend I never have. This was one of those times where I was nearly brought to tears. Truffaut did a masterful job of weaving this story of a troubled child and making him a very sympathetic character. I was able to see myself as a youth in Antoine’s eyes. I could feel his pain and agony at every turn. This is a brilliant piece of film making.

If you are the sort of person who has to have 100% closure at the end of a movie then this is definitely not the choice for you. If you were frustrated by the end of No Country for Old Men then you will probably want to avoid this. I thought the ending was absolutely brilliant. Then again I thought the same thing about the ending of the Soprano’s for many of the same reasons. So if you enjoy gritty human interest pieces and are not averse to subtitled foreign films, and if you are then get the hell out of my blog, then this is certainly a masterpiece that was well deserved of all the praise it has received over these many years.

9

9
Director: Shane Acker
Writers: Pamela Pettler (Screenplay), Shane Acker (Story)
Starring: Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Elijah Wood

I will readily admit that I am not really big on animated features, that is more Rob’s thing than mine, but I do occasionally enjoy an animated film. It didn’t take long for me to realize that there were some very serious flaws with this film. On the surface it was going to be a movie about a group of robot dolls that have survived in a post apocalyptic future devoid of humans. In fact the only survivors are the robot dolls and a robot monster. The robot dolls live in fear of the monster and have to scavenge the streets when they can to find objects which they can use to build other things. The first big issue I have is that this movie is just too short to go anywhere. I wanted to see the struggle of the robot dolls had to go through before 9 showed up to help them see that they could not only survive but live. I did not get to see this at all. Basically as soon as 9 arrives, they get the guts to fight the monster. There was no back story or development to speak of. They did fill in some of the gaps later in the film but by then I just didn’t care. Acker was unable to provide me with an emotional attachment to any of his characters.

The other critical with the film was the target demographic. I have no idea what it was. It was far too scary for young children but there wasn’t enough substance and story for adults. As a result, you wound up with a movie that isn’t really targeted to anyone at all.

I will say that the animation was, for the most part, brilliant. It was a beautiful film to look at but in the end it sort of had the feeling of a Michael Bay movie. Lots of pretty things to look at but no substance whatsoever.

Waldo

New Kick Ass Trailer

The folks over at Filmonic have the new trailer for Kick Ass. Check it out.

http://ow.ly/16itqT

And in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here.

Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity

Director: Oren Peli
Writer:    Oren Peli
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

There is something very deceptive about this film. Of course it is marketed as the scariest movie of all time but that is not the movie they made at all. I suppose it could be terrifying, if you were 9 years old and had never seen a horror movie before. I didn’t think that it was in any way frightening. If I had approached it as a horror movie I would have been sorely dissapointed.I realized very quickly that there was a delicate layer to this film that has been completely overlooked. That is what I want to talk about.

Beneath the dark veneer of something wicked haunting you and essentially scaring the crap out of you at every turn, there was another movie altogether. A movie that nobody seems to be paying attention to. In that movie, there was an interesting relationship dynamic between our two main characters. In that movie we can witness the dissection of one couples relationship. In the beginning they are so happy with each other. Nothing could be better in their little world. Even with the early stages of terror creeping into their lives they are very much in love. As the film progresses we see the relationship begin to crumble before our very eyes. The love starts to slowly go away, the happiness diminishes, and eventually we are left with a shell of the relationship that we started with.

I think that as a horror movie this movie earns about a C, maybe even a C-. As a drama that explores the struggles that outside stressors put on human relationships, I would put it at a B. It’s certainly no Away From Her but it does an unexpectedly good job of approaching that relationship dynamic. I think Oren Peli should be credited for making a horror film with real human drama attached to it.

All in all I enjoyed the film, but only because of this subtext. Like I said, approach it as a horror movie and you are likely to come away feeling cheated. Enjoy the relationship aspect and you will probably like what you see.

Waldo

So Here we Are

I’m Waldo. Me and my buddy Rob are movie nerds. Some call us movie snobs or elitists but that is untrue. We are just selective about what we watch and I thought it would be a good idea for us to review what we watch and put those reviews here. So that’s what we will be doing.